1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a data interchange system and, more particularly, to a computer system that is adapted to communicate and translate data between various computer systems.
2. Discussion
Data interchange systems are used to allow at least one computer system that is adapted to process data having a first data structure, to communicate this data with at least one other computer system, adapted to process data, having a second and dissimilar data structure or format. More particularly, the interchange system transforms or translates data having a first structure, into a targeted data structure format, which is communicated to the target computer system. Moreover, while these prior interchange systems have adequately allowed for the transformation of dissimilar data structures, they have suffered from a number of drawbacks.
Most of these prior systems have used a "dictionary structure technique", for describing the translation of messages. More particularly, this techniques requires that a received message be separated into a fixed number of hierarchical levels, each being associated with a unique dictionary. This dictionary is then used to translate or transform the associated hierarchical data structure level, into a corresponding target structure. While effective in some situations, this technique fails to achieve the desired transformation if the message format requires more hierarchical levels than there are dictionaries available. In this situation, the incoming messages are not properly translated and the interchange system fails to provide the desired communication.
Moreover, these dictionaries are often of a fixed format, corresponding to specific types of messaging or data structure formats which are allowed to be translated. Should other types of structured messages be received by these prior interchange systems, the received messages fail to become translated and the desired communication does not occur. Therefore, these prior interchange systems are incapable of accepting new or other types of data formatted messages, which have not been previously described.
Moreover, many of these prior data interchange systems directly map or "couple" the definition of the translating or mapping functions between each source and target message. Therefore, should new message formats be desired, or current formats modified, a sizable effort is required to change the entire source and target mapping arrangement. Therefore, should additional formats be desired, a large amount of time and effort is wasted in adding these new structures to the previously defined system. Moreover, many of these systems requires a different methodology or manner of message specification, requiring a great deal of effort upon the part of the designer or user and further adding to the overall inefficiency and undesirability of these systems. Lastly, many of these prior interchange systems require that the mappings or translations be performed at the time that the source message or data is found, and do not allow the data to be withheld until a later time. This timing constraint requires a relatively complex and inefficient system scheduling operation, and further increases the overall transformation time associated with these systems.
There is therefore a need to provide a data interchange system which allows various types of data formats to be translated and received by targeted systems. Moreover, there is a further need to allow this provided data interchange system to be easily adaptable and operable with a variety of data structures, and to allow the interchange system to efficiently transform these data structures from one format to another.